Jet Lagged

Luckily, I was able to squeeze in a quick visit to my parents' home this past week. Originally, I had planned on leaving after my shift on Sunday night. I raced to get all of my dictations done and sprinted out to the parking lot in the snow. The usual 20-minute drive to the airport took over 45 minutes, and sadly my flight was canceled due to the current storm, which ultimately resulted in 13 more inches to the already established impenetrable wall of white fluffy stuff on my lawn.

ALL of Monday was spent in various airports and my new route included an extra layover and routing through O'Hare, where 200+ flights were canceled. So, I arrived in Phoenix late Monday night, over 22 hours later than planned.

The visit home was brief, but great. It was good to spend time with my quirky brothers and sister-in-law. We helped make gingerbread cookies on Christmas Eve. For reasons unknown, my mother had acquired a lobster-shaped cookie cutter, so many a ginger lobster was born. Being the reclusive group we are, we skipped the hometown Santa parade and gathering of the masses in the town plaza, and headed off to our traditional candlelit church service. The failing octogenarian organist played at 1/3 the correct tempo, and appeared to have a dissociative fugue during the 4th verse of "Joy to the World" as she suddenly began playing a different song with her left hand, while somehow continuing on with her right. It was very strange.

Many a homemade tamale was scarfed down by yours truly. The javelina are again on the rampage, and gobbled up mom's poinsettias by the front door. I hope they get a tummyache.

My parents loved the GPS unit that my brothers and I pitched in on. (It's always more fun to me to watch other people open the gifts I picked out than opening my own.) The MRE's sent by AG were a big laugh, although having arrived later than planned, there wasn't a good time for us to make a meal of them together.

Christmas Day there was prime rib, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade rolls, Yorkshire pudding, cranberry jelly, and cranberry relish. Sister-in-law outdid herself again with a chocolate cream pie and blackberry/raspberry cheesecake in addition to the assortment of holiday cookies. AG was able to call and is doing well. Apparently, there's a surplus of lobster and steak at the current base he is at, poor guy!

The flight home was uneventful. Half of the snow had melted away in my absence. No sooner had I made it in the door, when I got a call asking if I could work the overnight shift as someone had called out sick. I already had the early shift today, so that wasn't possible, but I got up extra early in the morning and called in to make sure they weren't in overwhelmed mode.

Today was the usual list of suspects: headache, nonspecific abdominal pain, chest pain, acute exacerbation of chronic back pain, neck strain, suicidal ideation, scabies, vaginal bleeding, et al. Guess it's back to the grindstone!

Santa's Knee

It has been snowing a lot here lately. The snowblower has piled snow up past the the height of the doors of my car on each side. I have a narrow driveway, so there's barely room anymore to drive down between the walls of snow.

The other night I was working in the Pediatric ED, when I happened to glance over at the adult side. There, in room 19, was a man in his 60s wearing a t-shirt that tugged at his beer belly, red suspenders, and blue jeans. His long white hair snaked past his shoulders and he had a full scruffy beard. Both hands were bandaged with gauze and were obviously now reduced to bloody meat as blood was ominously spreading across the dressing. As it turned out, he'd stuck not one, but both hands into his snowblower.

For only a brief second, I thought about grabbing the closest screaming tot and plopping him/her down on Santa's lap. Perhaps AG and I should start with a dog...

Strung Out

I just finished putting up more Christmas lights. Last year, I was working in the ICU up until the week of Christmas, so I just didn't bother. The year before, I was disappointed to see that the strand of lights that I had bought didn't span the width of the house. When I went to buy more lights, I was disappointed that the store was sold out of the weird snowflake-style icicle lights that I had bought.

This year, I saw that Lowe's was carrying the right kind of lights, so I quickly bought another strand. I put up the lights last weekend and was agitated that I now only had enough lights to span just over half the width of the house (it's really not a big house, so this was puzzling). Today, I put up two more strands of lights, and now they wrap around to the side.

Putting up lights is somewhat of an adventure. It requires balancing a ladder in the mulch of my unevenly surfaced flower beds. While I was on the ladder, the snow flurries started. An elderly woman stopped on the sidewalk and complimented me on how she likes looking out the front of her house and seeing all of the lights. This was nice to hear as I tried to balance towards the house in anticipation of a failing ladder.

As I got around to the side, I realized that I could no longer use the more stable inverted V-shaped option of the ladder because the slope on the side of the house is too steep. So, I resorted to propping the ladder against the side of the house. While reaching up and somewhat backwards to reach the nails, I was reminded of a news report that I heard a few years ago. It was something about how the risk-taking center of one's brain typically matures at age 25. For me, this is definitely true. (Apparently this has never happened for "The Phoenix" in regards to her driving!)

Like my father and his mother, I am a true worrier. Last week, I screamed as we slowly went down a hill on the four-wheeler. Maybe it's occupation-related. After reducing ankle fractures from four-wheeler and ladder injuries, not to mention toe amputations from lawn mowers, I guess it's somewhat of a miracle that I don't wear full football gear every time I leave the house or operate machinery.

The good thing about being precariously perched against the side of my house on a slope was that if I fell backwards, I could shorten my fall by landing on my neighbor's suburban. Perhaps they had OnStar? Maybe it would automatically call for help when I hit the roof?

To my dismay, I ran out of nails for the lights about 10 feet along the side of the house. So now I have a clump of lights hanging down. Oh well, I'm not getting back on that ladder for a few weeks...

Wild Hogs

Christmas was nice and quiet.I spent most of the time just sitting around visiting with my parents, brothers and sister-in-law. The rest of the time was spent napping as my parting gift from the children in the ED was a nasty respiratory virus. I don't know why anytime I have any time off or my schedule slows down my body insists on getting sick.

One thing that I guess is a little bit different about the part of the country where my parents live is that javelina rove the streets at night, looking for food anywhere they can find it. My mother was bitterly complaining as on Christmas Day they decided to completely obliterate the pointsettia that she had out by the front door. They really are a small-sized pig, and more of a menace than anything else, knocking over trash cans. Kind of like what raccoons are in northern areas, minus the rabies.

Tamales are also a Southwestern part of our Christmas traditions. Ever since we moved to that small town, one of the ladies that my mother used to work with brings us tamales every year. Tamales are such a pain to make that many women in that area will get together and make a day of it, and then freeze them to serve throughout the year. Her tamales are different than what you can get in a restaurant as they are made with more of a white cornmeal, and she always sticks an olive in each one for extra flavor.

So that was about it: continuous feeding and talking for a few days. My flight back the other night got in just in time for me to run home, turn the heat in the house back up, and head off to work. I was a little more tired than usual after sitting around the Philadelphia airport for about 6 hours due to my jet being stuck somewhere in Canada, but it wasn't bad.